“SIMON, son of Taylan, son of Ann, 37 years old.”
Elmas, the famous fortune-teller of Famagusta repeats these words three times and then mumbles something in Arabic. Her fingers fumble across words and through pages of a thick, well-worn book of Arabic texts.
“Simon, son of Taylan, son of Ann, 37 years old,” she says again and stops abruptly, her grey-blue eyes riveted to mine, full of foreboding.
“Your stars are gone! Gone!”
“What does that mean?” I ask, my palms sweating buckets.
She fumbles some more and appeals, I assume, to her source.
“You have been tied; someone has tied you up. They’ve put a spell on you.”
“Where were you at the age of 27?”
“Here,” I said.
“That’s when it happened. And at 33, where were you?”
“Still here.”
It flashes through my mind that I married at the age of 27, and divorced at the age of 33. When you are with people like Elmas I guess everything takes on some kind of significance.
Elmas is, I think, in her late sixties, and judging by her accent from the southeast of Turkey. Her clothes are traditional and her hair loosely tied beneath a headscarf. People say she is very rich, having read fortunes day-in, day-out for years. She is also rather fat.
“Do you have friends who play the guitar?” she asks.
I tell her I do.
“Stay away from them. They are not good for you. And stay away from hotels and nightlife, they will bring you only sorrow.”
“Oh dear.”
“They have taken your stars away. But maybe if you return on a day that is not Thursday, I will be able to help you.”
“Did the guitarist take my stars?”
“I don’t know, I just can’t see them.”
“Yeah, right,” I say to myself.
She asks me if I sleep well at night.
I tell her I generally do.
“And your work? Is it going ok?”
“Great.”
“Very strange. Very strange, indeed.”
I offered her money, but Elmas did not want any for her short, abortive consultation. I guess she felt a little sorry for me. Unless, of course, she was making it all up.
I had first heard about the woman 10 years ago, shortly before I was due to get married. My ex-mother-in-law went to see her to check out whether I was good enough for her daughter. Apparently I was, but I heard later that my ex was advised that she would have to keep a very tight rein on me to prevent me from “getting distracted”.
Crazy thoughts flash through my head as I listen.
Perhaps my ex-mother-in-law put a spell on me to keep me bound to her daughter. If it’s true it did not do much good.
Everybody in north Cyprus knows Elmas – literally everybody. There are even rumours that Rauf Denktash consults her, but then again there are rumours about everyone and everything in north Cyprus.
After my consultation I text a friend of mine – an astrologer, among other things, and tell her my stars have been nicked.
“Of course they have,” she says. “She doesn’t know anything about you, but by the time you go back she’ll have done her research and be able to tell you something.”
That is assuming I do go back. I tell her about the curse.
“That’s the whole point, you dickhead. That’s how she makes the real money, by breaking spells.”
I decide to phone my ex.
“Did your mum put a spell on me?” I ask in an as unprovocative tone as I can muster.
“Don’t be such a f***ing idiot.”
But then the plot begins to thicken as my ex tells me of a visit she paid to Elmas just prior to our divorce.
“I went because I wanted to know whether or not we’d stay together. But when I went she said she’d studied my stars just two days before. I was very confused and asked her why and she told me that a man and a woman had been to her and asked her to put a spell on the two of us so that we’d get divorced.”
“What? So there was a second spell?”
My visit to Elmas came about simply out of a desire to write a story for the Cyprus Mail. Anyone who knows me knows I have no interest in, or tolerance for any kind of mumbo-jumbo, whether it be astrology or biorhythms. But this was getting spooky.
The spookiness was compounded when my girlfriend, who went into Elmas’ little room straight after me, emerged to inform me that something bad could happen to me soon.
Brilliant! Bloody brilliant, and just four days before I get on a plane to England.
“Yeah, she says you might have an accident or something. She also said you’ve got a nice face.”
That’s something, at least.
“And so what did she tell you about you?”
“She said I’m going abroad soon to work, and that I’ll freeze my studies for a year in order to do so.”
“But that’s true.”
“Yeah, it’s amazing. And she told me what I do and that it’s going to start making me rich in around two years’ time.”
“Well, bully for you. You’ll be able to pay my hospital bills, assuming I don’t actually die.”
“By the way, she warned me not to marry you. She said you could have been married and divorced ten times by now.”
My ex just phoned me back.
“Be careful. Ninety-nine per cent of Elmas’ predictions come true.”
I cannot tell whether she is genuinely concerned or rubbing it in. In fact, I am not sure about anything right now. Perhaps I should choose my stories more carefully in the future.
